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Me,

Holy crap - it might just be that I can send some thoughts back your way! I feel honored...

You know, the same happened with me yesterday if you read my post. W mentioned that my behaviour of the other day was a flashback to the old Sven. While I think I didn't handle it the best, I think I did okay.

I did okay by FIRST and FOREMOST NOT DISAGREEING (or as TJ used to put it Always Agree). I looked her in the eyes and said, "Oh, I understand. I can see how you would see me as being selfish and putting my needs first".

Now, I would have just let it go (unless she wanted to talk about it more). However because we were in an MC session, I tried to describe the actions I took immediately following. Meaning that I changed my behaviour pretty quickly - and the proof was there. You said to me, that our R's need the "tincture of time". Consider an animal that is abused - beaten. It's rescued by you and is sitting there next to you when a friend walks by and you raise a hand to wave. If the abuse was recent, the animal might just cower and lower its head, right? The wounds (even our own) run deep in relationships. Consistent, positive behaviour - building love banks, emotional bank accounts, etc. take time - and lots of it. Right?

So what can we do? Well we work on those bank accounts. We develop trust over a long period of time. And we do that by 1) being vigilant about the changes that we've made in ourselves and 2) recognize that we will fall down from time to time but to disagree about something that wounded our spouses deeply won't help.

Saying that it is okay to "slip into old habits" is more than not validating her concern - it completely invalidates it. I've tried REALLY hard to throw out the "Mr. Fix It" hat. I don't think our venusian W's are looking for a fix at that moment - but just for us to acknowledge and sometimes talk through it. I found that yesterday, just talking through how I thought about what I was doing, how it made me feel seemed to diffuse it a little bit.

Hope that helps. Just some thoughts.

Sven

Sven,

Thank you very much, I appreciate the input. What you wrote makes sense and I liked how you handled it when it came up in your situation.

I just finished Mars/Venus. Very inciteful. I feel it's right on about men/Martians and asked my W to read it to see if she thought it seemed applicable to how she thinks. I did call right after reading it and said I appeciated all the efforts she has been making with our relationship and around the house and that I was sorry if I haven't been holding up my end. She told me that she felt I was, but still, I think I need to keep cognizant of doing small things rather than focusing on large things.

Me